ASSIGNMENT
Read the Passage! Do you agree or disagree, or can you relate to his or her opinion in the post? ADD any thoughts or additional information that you may have found concerning their topic?
For our week four discussion, I watched an episode of ICarly from Nickelodeon. The emotional issues that were present among the characters are this show were almost with every main character. The main character Carly and her brother Spencer are growing up together alone without any parents while their father is deployed over seas. They have a constant emotional battle of missing him and having to grow up without him. Carly has two best friends, Freddy and Sam. Sam battles emotional issues due to her mother being an addict and not involved in her life. Which is why she is always at Carly’s apartment because she does not want to be home alone all the time. Freddy battles emotional issues as well due to him living with just his mom and she serves a very over protective role in his life and constantly wants to be with him and know his every move. As far as moral issues, there is some name calling in the show, but it determines which character is involved. Sam’s character is shown as a more rough strong type of girl, that nothing bothers her. She and Freddy playfully fight all the time. So, Sam will at times call Freddy names such as “Loser” or “Jerk” as used in some teen relationships in the real world (CommonSenseMedia, 2022). Also, the show can portray some use of cyberbullying (CommonSenseMedia, 2022). This is due to the characters online web show, they will look up reviews that people say about them online after they are done broadcasting to see how they rate them. If they see some reviews that are negative, during the show they will “jokingly” dislike the comment and speak out loud what they are typing back to them. Unfortunately, I feel that today’s TV shows, movies and social media have a negative effect on our tweens. For example, based on just one TV show that I watched, ICarly, tweens can think that it is ok to call their friends “Loser” and “Jerk.” They can also start thinking that cyberbullying is an appropriate action to take if someone posts something negative about them. This type of behavior can cause children to make wrong decisions at a young age that can have a negative effect on their development. The guidelines that I would provide to parents whose children fall in this age range on social media exposure is to monitor what they are watching and who they are following on social media. This should be done until an appropriate age that the parents feel the teenagers know what to follow/watch and what not to follow/watch. This way they grow up with the correct guidelines and discipline until they are old enough to decide for themselves between the right and wrong decisions.
